Innovations in Educational and Research Technologies

As a nurse it is not uncommon to encounter the "hey, can you answer some questions for me, or can you look at this, or what should I do about this" scenario; this goes for family, friends, neighbors, or strangers at the store who see you in your scrubs. As much as we might groan through it, because sometimes we just don't want to be in nursing mode, it is important to be able to deliver the best information and helpful tools for people to be able to make an educated decision on whatever topic they may be facing. When a neighbor comes over and reports that he has been diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and has been looking up information, it is important to lead him to the best websites to use to be able to gather information that is correct and able for him to understand. The neighbor mentioned that he has been looking at websites such as Wikipedia, WebMD, and the CDC.  The first thing I would tell my neighbor is that Wikipedia is not a cr...

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Education is an important aspect of life. It is the foundation through which most people will build their careers as well as their lives. It is sometimes what defines people as individuals, while also helping them belong to a group, helping them to connect to something. One such field of education is that of the world of science. The world of science is huge and deals with many sectors, including the medical field, which is home to many different areas and people all its own. With the many different programs and people within the medical field, it is important to be able to educate everyone with the same information and in a manner which can help to reach the masses. Some ways to do that are through virtual reality and simulation.  For this post, I was going to try and find a simulation that I could use and post to educate people on that as a learning tool. I enjoy simulations because I feel that they help create a multi-learning environment, by working in a group you get sev...

Teaching can be a tough thing to do. The educator has to prepare themselves to be able to be open enough to deploy the knowledge of themselves to others. They have to be prepared for the random questions that they haven't thought about, be prepared for the class of people who might not be interested in what they have to say or be prepared for the class who will challenge whatever the teacher has to say. Along with having to be prepared for teaching a group of students, the teacher, or in our case, the nursing informaticist needs to understand the different kinds of teaching methods to be able to teach appropriately in any given situation.  One scenario the nursing informaticist is going to face is the education of nurses in regards to different kinds of technology. One specific piece of technology is through the use of mobile apps in the clinical setting. For this, a good teaching method would be for one-on-one education with the nursing informaticist and the clinical nurse. I...

Change and learning are things which can come hard for many people. The change puts us out of our comfort zones and learning something new means we have to understand and comprehend new concepts for ourselves. Trying to implement change or learning can take a long time and requires active participation from the person trying to implement these things in their life. A good way to understand change and how it works is through looking at Kurt Lewin's theory of change. This theory involves three different pieces; unfreezing, change, and refreezing. The first step of change is recognizing that there is something that needs to be changed. In this scenario, we can look at the idea of trying to implement and execute learning and change to a group of older doctors who are learning a new computer system to use for charting and entering orders.  The first step of change happens when you recognize that there is a need for a change. In Lewin's theory, this begins the process of unfree...

Nursing informatics is a part of nursing that is still highly misunderstood. Most people think that nursing informaticists work only with computers and computer systems and have no interaction with the people part of nursing anymore. However, a big part of nursing informatics is being able to educate nurses on the computer systems that will help them to be able to work more efficiently on the floor. In educating the different nurses on EHR systems, it is important for the nursing informaticists to keep in mind different learning objectives that they wish to accomplish within the informal classroom setting.  Bloom's taxonomy is a great way for the nursing informaticist to guide the class and make sure to keep in line with the information that needs to be shared. Each level on Bloom's taxonomy scale helps to identify the different levels of learning that can happen for each newly identified piece of information. To help make a successful learning environment, the nursing inf...